


Though We Burn

by bluRaaven



Category: Original Work
Genre: Desolation, Gen, NaNoWriMo 2016, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-28
Updated: 2016-11-28
Packaged: 2018-09-02 22:28:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8685727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluRaaven/pseuds/bluRaaven
Summary: Written in response to a NaNo challenge to create an unforgettable scene including a bronze knife, a ribbon, a box of unidentifiable powder and a glass ring engraved with runes.  The time is two hours. "Your pulse is hot and heavy in your throat. A moment of silence follows and it’s too long, too damned long, and you can feel the shakes begin, your hands tightening on the grip and hand guard of your assault rifle."





	

**Author's Note:**

> My Silver Lining by First Aid Kit - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKL4X0PZz7M - and Sarah Monette inspired this piece.

"Clear!" 

Your breath hitches and you jerk at the jarring, but not unexpected shout.  It's only the first of many, you tell yourself, and swallow.  Your pulse is hot and heavy in your throat, and your traitorous heart races at a triple beat, either trying to free itself from your chest, or driving you towards a premature cardiac arrest. 

You look to your right, where you know the others are, though they are hidden from view.  A moment of silence follows and it's too long _, too damned long_ , and you can feel the shakes begin, your hands tightening on the grip and hand guard of your assault rifle. 

"Not again," your lips form the words in a soundless prayer while your ears strain for the slightest of sounds, the crunch of gravel, or the low whirr of rotors that announce the arrival of VD's, the semi-robotic life form you encountered two towns and three hundred miles back, which cut your numbers in half, moving though the soldiers like reapers through a field of wheat. 

"Clear!"  Ed's voice slices through the silence, and it shatters into a thousand pieces, carried on the collective sigh of relief that you cannot hear, but feel deep inside. 

A breath you didn't know you were holding rushes out of your lungs, carrying with it the sour undertone of bile.  You can never quite get rid of it, no matter how often you try to spit it out.  The air tastes of soot, oily and bitter.  You work your jaw, your mandible aching from how had you've clenched your jaw.  Even your teeth hurt, the same deep-rooted burn you experience when you wake in the early dawn hours, bathed in cold sweat.  

You wish you could sweat now, but if there is a drop of water in your body, it evaporates as soon as it squeezes out of your pores.  The whole fucking planet is burned and blistered, and the midday sun is unforgiving, beating down, slow cooking all of you in your body armour.  You wish you could wipe your brow through your helmet, and blink through the saline sweat stinging your eyes.  Your goggles begin to steam up, the air vents clogged by the same red sand that covers this entire god-forsaken planet. 

To take your mind of the discomforts, you squint past the spider web crack in the glass, barely making out the Fata Mogana-like image of two of your comrades flickering in and out of focus in the far distance. 

"Clear!"  You yell once it's your turn, your voice catching on the last part. 

You'll never sound like Trotter who can shout down a cohort of agitated Zuwi, or like Pike who can make a unit or seasoned veterans hop from one foot to the other in the sudden urge to pass water, but that is one deficiency you have come to terms with over time. 

An eternity later, Finnigan gives the all-clear. 

You let your head hang, inhaling dust through the scarf covering your lower face.  There is a muscle twitching in your back, but no matter how often you stretch or how you rearrange your shoulder blade, the pain never quite leaves.  Hobson says the combined weight of the pack, armour and weapons are compressing your spine, and exerting pressure on the nerves. 

All you understand is that the problem's not going away anytime soon, so you deal with it to the best of your abilities; by ignoring it. 

You disassemble the bipod for your rifle and put it away, heaving yourself to your feet with a grunt. 

Liz emerges from behind a corner, with a clump of dry grass stuck to her helmet, and smudge of soot on her cheek. 

"We're to search the place for survivors," she says.  "Kent's orders."  

"Think we'll find anybody?" you ask, too weary to muster even a semblance of hope. 

"In these ruins?"  She hoists an eyebrow, giving their surroundings a once-over.  "I'll take you out to the fanciest fucking diner this side of the sun, if we do," Liz says with a crooked grin that never fails to get a smile out of you. 

She is good at talking to people, even if they seldom talk back. 

It's not just that you didn't know much English apart from phrases you've remembered from playing 2000's video games before you found yourself on a ship full of Snappers (standing for Space-Nappers, according to Brigs) bound for the next galaxy.  But then 'Blow off, choffer," and ' If I didn't know better, I'd think you had feelings for me,' were never phrases you could repeat to your commanding officer anyway. 

You lose a game of rock paper scissors against Liz as to who gets to patrol the main road, and take the next right.  The houses here are smaller than the ones at your back, made of mudbrick and a uniform grey in colour.  A few other soldiers are milling around the, poking listlessly at the debris.  You nod at Higgins and Eve who have sought refuge in the shade of a fallen tower, and continue on. 

Cabri scatter as you approach, climbing over piles of rubble with a grace you will never muster.  They could almost pass for miniature goats, save for their squirrelish faces and four-fingered front paws.  They are popular companion animals in other places, but here they are more likely to end up in a pot than on some farmer's lap. 

You pick a house at random, kneel at the door before pushing it open, weapon at the ready.  It's dark inside, too dark to make out anything, but you don't need to see to know it is abandoned.  You come past half a dozen such houses, and they differ only in which part of them has crumbled away.  Empty windows gape in their facades like rotten teeth, and from their blackness invisible spectres trace your progress through their city. 

Your step quickens in its own. 

When you arrive at the last house of the street, you are met with an unusual sight.  This one is almost habitable, and for a split second you manage to _forget_ , to feel bad for treading dirt on somebody's carpet.  The intact furniture somehow makes the experience only more eerie.  You have gotten used to broken shells of homes, inhabited only by the wind and the memories of their residents.  

Now your eyes set on sun-bleached tapestries, a table with four chairs, two of which are knocked over, like whoever had sat there had stood up in haste, and a commode leaning drunkenly against the far wall. 

You startle when you recognize the wood it's made from; it is elm.  The thought is ludicrous, and yet.  And yet you know.  You've seen your father work wood like this before, have sweated and laboured alongside him whenever orders became urgent and time short. 

You bite the thick leather of your right glove where your middle and ring finger used to be, and tug it off.  The instant flare of heat stings your bare skin, but it is worth just to run the palm of your hand over the wood, its rough, thirsty surface. 

You don't even notice the scattered objects at first.  When you do, you lift them, one by one, feeling like an intruder.  It's not enough to drive you away. 

Next to an empty candelabra lies a ring, its molten surface is smooth and deep glossy black; obsidian.  You hold it up to the light when you spy some runes engraved in it, but you don't recognize the script.  You put it back down. 

Your fingers only skim along the hilt of a bronze knife.  If this is the kind of weapons these people had, then it's no wonder they are no more. 

You move on to the small ornate box with tiny colourful stones set in swirling patterns.  The decoration implies some importance, even if the contents are only a light greyish powder that you first mistake for ashes.  _Ashes_.  You quickly put down the box again, closing the lid with a snap. 

You want to wipe your hands on your pants, then think it's stupid juvenile impulse you try to resist, but end up doing it anyway.  You try not to think too hard on how it makes you feel better. 

Your turn to leave, when a flash of white catches your eyes. 

It's a dress that lies half-buried until you tug it free, and smooth it out.  A white dress with a red ribbon, not nearly big enough for a grown-up, not small enough to have belonged to a doll. 

 _Shit_. 

You don't know that you have spoken until you do, frozen to the spot, hands trembling. 

"Private." 

You flinch, and whirl around, the dress still hanging from one hand.  Dropping it would feel like sacrilege, even when you snap into a salute. 

"Sir?" 

Finnigan looks from the piece of clothing to your face, and you wonder what it is he finds in your gaze that for a moment tugs the corners of his mouth downwards.  Behind his visor his face is all stubble and dark shadow under eyes as colourless as the rest of this world.  There's a spark of something else, too, and you've invested far too much energy and sleep time trying to not dwell on it. 

"We're moving on," he rasps in a voice that's been scorched by too many cigarettes. 

"Yes, Sir." 

Finn lingers for a moment longer, and you think he wants to say something more.  But the moment passes as the man rubs the heel of his hand over his face, curses, and turns on his heel, shouldering his MG and kicking open the door.  His silhouette is momentarily backlighted by blinding white, and then he disappears, leaving you feeling worse than before. 

You do not hurry after him.  First you put the dress back.  If you were younger, and purer of heart, you might have tugged the ribbon free, wound it around your hand and promised not to forget.  Perhaps you would have kept it, clung to the texture of a long-lost life. 

But you have found its likes before. 

Last time. 

And the one before. 

You will march on, with your gun and your painful, damaged spine, and with each empty planet you pass through, you'll lose a little part of yourself that no trinket can restore, until one day your eyes will become the same hollow pits you see whenever you look at your commander.  Eight years and two galaxies from home, and you cannot escape the crushing familiarity of it all. 

**Author's Note:**

> Also my first time using this POV. TThank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed the story!


End file.
